Parallel Time by Brent Staples

Author:Brent Staples
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

|| Come the Revolution

I was standing at my locker, my books stacked at my feet, when a vast cloud of hair floated by me and stopped at a locker across the hall. The hair shimmered like graphite and was hyperreal in its size and roundness. It framed the lovely face of Josephine Hood, one of the first girls at school to wear her hair in an Afro.

Josephine cast a regal glance up and down the hallway, the cloud rotating slowly as she turned. She was letting herself be watched, and this was fine with me. I liked watching Josephine. I’d been watching her for a long time. Her legs were strong and beautifully shaped and moved sinuously beneath her as she stalked the hallways. The legs were widely set so that Josephine was more firmly planted on ground than most people. I ached to introduce myself, but didn’t because she was magnificent. Also I was below her station: Josephine was preparing for college; I was doomed to the steno pool at IBM.

Josephine had a strong appetite for being at the center of things. She personified the anger of the time, and this won her a starring role in protests and agitations. She’d run for some office in student government and won. I had voted for her, twice.

Josephine’s Afro was a symbol of courage. Girls who went “natural” got significantly more grief from their parents than boys. My own Afro had caused considerable friction with my father. He preferred the clean-cut look and had determined in advance that no “nappy headed niggers” would live in his house or eat at his table. I built the Afro surreptitiously, gradually increasing the loft, then holding it steady while he exhausted his anger. Then I let it out as far as it would go.

Girls had no such subterfuge. They washed their hair and, bang: the silky pageboy exploded into a bristling crown of kinks. Boys could be as outrageous as they wanted because most were only headed for the shipyard anyway. But girls had to work in offices; they had to find husbands. Parents worried that kinky hair meant unemployment and spinsterdom. Fathers raged. Mothers wept and pleaded. Girls gave in and fried their heads again. But Josephine had held out.

Josephine’s locker banged shut. She hoisted her books onto her lovely hip and prepared to walk away. It was now or never. I went over the script in my head: “Hello, Josephine.” No. “Hi, Josephine. I voted for you in the election. My name is Brent.” (Extend your hand.) I planned to speak in a baritone, for maximum romantic effect.

I stepped over my books and crossed the hall to where she stood rattling the locker, trying to get it shut. Her face was turned downward, cast in shadow by her hair. I had no choice but to speak into the cloud itself. “Hi, Josephine. I voted…” Then the latch caught. She turned and glided away without even seeing me. She hadn’t heard me either: My lips had moved, but the sexy baritone had died in my throat.

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