Color Me In

Chapter 2

I quietly enter our row with my arms crossed over my chest to cover the gigantic wet spot. Anything to avoid attracting attention.

Stand. Clap. Praise. Sit.

Every week it’s the same. I could handle the idea of church on special occasions, but every Sunday? My dad believes organized religion is for people who are weak and lazy, which is why they would rather listen to burning bushes and holy ghosts for direction than to logic. For the most part, Daddy only claims his Jewishness as an excuse to avoid spending time with my mom’s religious Baptist family or to get his own mother, who goes by “Bubby,” and tries to force us to go to temple all the time-sometimes under threat of death-off his back.

“It’s not about being Jewish, honey. It’s about being a Levitz,” he says after he pulls Bubby off the proverbial ledge and sends her home in a cab. I always try to ask him, “What does that mean? How can I be a Levitz without being Jewish?” But he just shakes his head and changes the subject. After a while, it got easier to not even try to figure it out.

My phone lights up in my lap. The screensaver I set up is a slideshow of photos chosen at random. This one is from a year ago. I should have deleted it. We were barbecuing, and my dad teased my mother by waving a chicken wing in her face. (She hates them, but I can’t understand why-they are so delicious.) He chased her around with it and we were all laughing.

“Ow!”

Clawlike nails plunge into the back of my arm. I put pressure on the angry half-moon indents on my pale skin, punishment for having my phone out during services. Sundays used to be fun and easy and dependable, but that’s all in the past now. Since my parents’ separation, nothing is the same.

Stand. Clap. Praise. Sit.

Done.

A sharp voice accosts me.

“Nevaeh, are you hungry? I said, are you hungry?” my auntie Anita yells, repeating herself for the power effect.

Auntie Anita is bossy. She has three kids and says if you aren’t direct, nothing gets done, but I think it’s just in her nature to tell people what to do. She and my mom couldn’t look less like siblings if they tried. Anita’s skin is darker than my mom’s golden brown, and she is almost five inches taller, not to mention the half foot added by the pile of twists that sit in a perfect heap on top of her head.

“Corinne?”

The natural crevices that outline each muscle under my aunt’s deep brown skin are on display as she grabs my mom’s shoulder.

My mom sits beside us with her head in the clouds. She’s petite, only five foot three, but regal. Her hair is pulled into a tight ballerina bun without so much as a baby hair out of place. Her eyes keep wandering down to her hand, where she fumbles with her wedding ring. I get it. I had braces for a few years, and mid-conversation my tongue would just drift over them like a magnet-there’s something about that mixture of metal and rubber covered in slimy spit. It’s weird, but the constant motion soothed me.

“Girl!” my aunt yells, failing to pop whatever bubble my mom is lost in.

Death would be less painful than the embarrassment from the glare of every person in the church as my aunt, irritated, sucks her teeth so loudly that the angels in the stained-glass windows join in on the judgment.

“Come on, let’s get Pa out of here before these old ladies smother him to death with their questions. It’s not like he’s got a direct line to Jesus. Nevaeh, go find your cousins and walk back to the house. It’s our turn to drive Miss Eveline home, and Lord knows we won’t have room for you all with her electric wheelchair in there.” She charges through the parishioners, dragging my mom along toward Pa’s shiny smooth head.

My grandfather stands out among the wide-brimmed Sunday hats and colorful silk scarves donned by the gaggle of women who listlessly wave paper fans around their faces, fighting off the deadly forces of menopause and global warming.

“Nevaeh, how you doin’ this Sunday?” Miss Clarisse intercepts me in her bright red pleather pantsuit. Her unseemly character was no doubt the cause of my aunt’s quick departure.

I smile and silently fight my urge to look down at her cleavage, which jiggles with each word that rumbles out of her.

“I’m fine,” I whisper.

“Damn, you’re quiet!” she yells through a wave of people who shake their heads as they walk by.

She takes me by the shoulder and spins me around.

“Why don’t you come down to my shop? We’ll get you into some fine dresses and have you look real nice for church next Sunday. Your mama’s taste is a little… dry after living in the suburbs with all those white folks for so long. Bring her with you and we’ll get you both some attention from a brotha.”

She smiles, but her voice betrays her desperation. Her shop is thirty years old, and the storefronts around here are getting picked off and sold one-by-one to the H&Ms and Zaras of the world.

“All right,” I say, and allow myself to get caught up in the
crowd.

I’ve got to keep moving. My cousins, Janae, Jordan, and Jericho, always sit with the youth group on Sundays, at the farthest end of the room.

“Nevaeh!”

Jericho, who goes by Jerry, is always excited to see me, as if I didn’t just move in with him a couple months ago. His mini-fro bobs along with him as he makes his way toward me to give me a hug. I squeeze his cheek. Jerry recently went through a preteen growth spurt, but it turned out to be horizontal rather than vertical.

“Jerry, can you get Jordan and Janae?” I ask. “We have to walk back.”

We turn to the crowd of kids who orbit around my older fraternal-twin cousins, protecting them like keepers in a quidditch match. Jerry looks at me, terrified.

“Fine, I’ll do it. Stay here,” I say, irritated and anxious as I walk toward them.

Janae looks up and nods at me as I approach. She sees everything, a skill she likely gets from Anita, although that’s about it in terms of their similarities. Janae has this avant-garde vibe that makes her both intimidating and alluring at the same time. She takes after her father, with eyes so big and brown you’re likely to get lost in them. Janae rarely pipes up unless she really has something to say, unlike Jordan, who has something to say at all times about everything.

“Ever heard of an iron?” Jordan says judgily, tugging on my wrinkled shirt. “You remember everyone, right?”

Her friends nod. We’ve done this every week-the same song and dance around Jordan and Janae having to explain to their friends why I only just started coming to church, why I’m not in youth group, why I can’t tan, and why my last name sounds like a brand of matzo ball soup.

“Your mom said we have to walk back. They don’t have any room in the car,” I explain sheepishly.

Jordan sucks her teeth as loudly as Anita, so I back up a few steps to give her and Janae space to say bye to their friends.

Jordan is Anita’s carbon copy, the younger twin by a whole fifteen minutes a fact she will never let Janae forget (like either of them had a conscious choice in the matter when they were barreling toward the birth canal).

“How long do you think until dinner?” Jerry asks, as if he
didn’t have eggs and waffles a few hours ago.

No one has answered him when the youth group organizer, Darnell, guilts us into gathering the pamphlets out of the pews just as we head toward the door. Darnell is a twenty-something social activist and a Harlem celebrity, famous for being on the front lines of all local community affairs and for always wearing some sort of political accessory. Today he has a pin on his lapel with a raised black fist on a white background.